"The Solar Economy", by one of the world's most effective analysts and advocates, lays out the blueprints of how political, economic and technological challenges of sustaniable energy can be met using indigenous, renewable and universally available resources, and the enormous opportunities and benefits that will flow from doing so.

The global economy and the way of life it has created are based on the exploitation of fossil fuels – coal, oil and, more recently, natural gas – and fossil fuels will be the engine of the collapse of that economy. Without fundamental change, it has no future. Fossil energy not only threatens massive environmental and social disruption through global warming but, at present rates of consumption, it will run out within decades, causing huge industrial dislocation. Even before then, the conflicts and imbalances it causes in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world’s economy will be frighteningly exacerbated.

The alternative exists: renewable energy from renewable sources – above all solar. Substituting renewable for fossil resources will take a new industrial revolution, which is imperative if the worst of the damage is to be averted, and which also offers an unprecedented chance to restructure the international order, revitalize regional economies and prevent environmental devastation.

It can be done, and it can be done in time. The Solar Economy, by one of the world’s most effective analysts and advocates, lays out the blueprints, showing how the political, economic and technological challenges can be met using indigenous, renewable and universally available resources, and the enormous opportunities and benefits that will flow from doing so.

Quotes

'This book is of the greatest importance for the future of mankind’Günther Grass, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature

‘A masterwork by the master advocate for solar’ Jeremy Leggett, author of The Carbon War

'The most powerfully written book on the energy situation. Highly recommended!'Choice

'Forget Kyoto - all talk and no action; this book shows how technological challenges can be met using indigenous, renewable and universally available resources, and predicts the enormous benefits.'Energy World

ScenarioFrom fossil fuels to solar power: transforming the global economyThe power of the pyromaniacsFossil resource dependency: how economic processes have come adrift from their environmental and social basesGlobal competition in place of global environmental policyThe origins of the fossil-fuel economyAccelerating change and global displacementBusiness unbound: cutting loose from nature and societyReconnecting business and society through solar resourcesFrom the political to the economic solar manifesto

Chapter 3The 21st century writing on the wall: the political cost of fuel and resource conflictA world in denial: the disregard for limited reservesDwindling reserves versus worldwide growth in demandArming for the resource conflictResource reserves, gunboat diplomacy and the moral bankruptcy of society

Chapter 4The distorting effects of fossil supply chainsThe rise and fall of the fossil cityThe fossil resource trap closes on the developing world

Chapter 5The mythology of fossil energyFigures of fancy: the inadequacy of conventional energy statisticsThe inadequacy of energy forecastsThe profligate subsidies for conventional energy systemsThe feigned productivity of nuclear and fossil energyIdeology and the physics of energyThe fear of the small scale

Chapter 8The profitability of renewable energy and resourcesWhose costs? Why solar and fossil resources cannot be compared on the basis of economic efficiency calculationsCost avoidance: economical application of solar resources in a nutshell

PART IVTOWARDS A SOLAR ECONOMY

Chapter 9Exploiting solar energyThe role of capital allowances - and their problemsTax-exempt status for solar resources: overcoming the legitimacy crisis of environmental taxationPossibilities and problems in the market for green electricityGreen suppliers and municipal self-sufficiencyCreative destruction in the energy industry and the transformation of the resource industryHard roads to soft resources